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Gauteng government outline plans to create 600 000 jobs by 2019
THE Gauteng government will outline plans to create 600 000 new jobs by 2019 and to increase spending on township manufactured products and services. Economic Development MEC Lebogang Maile will outline this when he presents his department’s budget vote in the Legislature in Johannesburg on Monday. As South Africa’s industrial and economic hub Gauteng has not escaped from the country’s cur-
will be about R42 million by 2019 that we are going to invest as provincial government. The question we need to ask ourselves is what the value of the investment we make is and how many jobs are we creating. And as I say we need about 600-thousand jobs to keep up.” He says through the newly adopted Provincial Economic Development Plan they intend not only to save jobs but also deal with the bottle necks in the manufacturing and services sector such as retail and call centres. Maile says they are also attending to challenges facing local businesses in townships such as space for working and ensuring their products access local and African markets. “Nigeria with the premier, we’ve been to East Africa, will be consolidating SADC, been to Namibia and message is we need to focus on intra-Africa trade. We need to start trading together. “Our intra-Africa trade is sitting at between 12 and 14% that’s too little. Our economies are still highly dependent on other continents when we have about a billion people on our continent.” Working with the private sector Maile says they will train about a 150 black industrialists. These individuals will be mentored to run their own firms to manufacture equipment used in the mining, agriculture and construction sector. Next week Maile will report back on the work done to revitalise the township businesses. He says through the Qondisa iShishinilakho campaign or Fix Your Business they now have about 7 000 entrepreneurs on their database up from 1 600. rent economic downturn. “Already we are spending more than R6 billion There are more than 2.7 million young people as the Gauteng provincial government. When we who are out of work in the province. came into office in 2014 we were spending about Over 200 000 people continue to flock into Gaut- 800-million on township based enterprises. We eng to seek a better life putting a strain on the are now spending more than 6-billion it’s still not budget for health, education and housing. enough. We want to spend at least 30% of our Maile says the biggest concern is to grow the budget by 2019.”Work is also underway to cut red economy and create jobs especially for the un- tape to ensure that those businesses who want employed youth. to invest in Gauteng the process is seamless and “Through our own infrastructure investment there quick.- www.sabc.co.za